My favourites

My favourites

Paul Holly

Head of Internal Communications

I started my journey with Beaverbrooks in July 1991, and since that day the time has flown by. It all started in our Bolton store. I remember looking at all of the different products and thinking how on earth will I be able to know enough about everything. As soon as I met the team, I knew they would be there to help me get this knowledge, and get it quickly to enable us to help our customers. I completed my JET 1 and JET 2 and this gave me a sound and broad knowledge about jewellery.

After 12 months, I applied and was accepted onto Beaverbrooks Management Development Programme (MDP), and within six months I was promoted to the Assistant Manager in our Leeds store. I worked in Leeds with another fabulous team for about 18 months and learnt about the people skills, business attitude and knowledge you have to have as a good manager.

Following this I decided it was the right time to manage my own store. I applied and was successful for the exciting manager’s position in Telford - our first venture as a company into the Midlands. Opening and managing Telford was an amazing experience. Even though I was the youngest ever manager for Beaverbrooks at the age of 19, Beaverbrooks showed complete trust in me. Helping the new team develop and grow to become confident and competent in a short space of time was highly rewarding.

The next step for me was to open another new store in the West Midlands at the Merryhill shopping centre and I managed the store for four years. In the second year of opening the store we achieved the highest percentage of our sales target on the company which gave us all a real buzz.

After Telford I moved back to the North West and managed our store in Stockport. During my time with the team in Stockport we won a prestigious national Jewellery award for being the best team in the UK, which was recognition we are all very proud of.

From Stockport, I became a Regional Manager in our North Central area and thoroughly enjoyed the fast-paced and varied role involved in working closely with many varying sized stores. I was in this position for six years.

I am now Beaverbrooks Head of Office and Retail coordination, based at our Head Office in St Anne’s on Sea. My role is very varied and I work with many of our Office departments all with the ultimate outcome to engage, involve and develop everyone within our business through effective and diverse communication and good planning. We manage all communications coming from our office, and strive to send the information and messages at the right time and in the most effective medium. We work to ensure that tasks and actions are sent at the right time and that the stores have the right amount of time to complete them.

I would highly recommend our business to anyone who would like to work for a forward thinking retailer with high morals and high work ethics. Every day brings new, exciting challenges and at Beaverbrooks everyone has an influence to develop the business we love, and to progress their career.